Syria 2016: looking for freedom, and for the truth

As 2016 is going away and 2017 approaching, we are able to look back to the sixth year of the Syrian Revolution; the reader will be disappointed if he wants predictions on the future, I don’t know it.

What is certain is the number of mass casualties and the force of weaponry : 50 000 deaths since the beginning of the Revolution in 2011, and millions of displaced persons (according to the UNHCR, three millions of Syrians fled the country since this date).

Concerning migrations and weaponry, 2015 and 2016 were crucial years : 2015 was the year of refugees , rejected by all European countries; little Aylan , dead on a Turkish beach , remains a symbol of Syrian refugees, and of the failure of EU on this issue.

2016 was the year of the alliances of Assad with Russia and Iran for the tactics of war and for weapons. Daraya, Douma, and, as I write these lines, Aleppo, had been the objects of the more sadistic and medieval tactic of war : the siege.When it is broken, as shows the photo below, it is by the Opposition, the Free Syrian Army; other humanitarian aid was hijacked by Assad’s forces.

Encircled so that no food and no medicine can enter the city, the population dies by starvation or by illness; to this one, Russia, which has a powerful aviation, and more armament than Assad, sends , by intermittence, shelling . Those of Assad , like those of Putin, are chemicals: the two leaders, whatever the opinion, make use of napalm.

Even the comparison with the Vietnam War, made by opponents to Assad in the West, is of no efficiency. Putin is a dictator, as Assad; another one joins the Coalition: Rouhani, leader of Iran.What is the consistency of this alliance? None.Iran is a religious dictatorship, Russia is atheist , Assad governs by heredity, not by Islam :Islam appears at the article 3 of the Constitution; in every Muslim land, it is since the first one; moreover, the Constitution is proclaimed “in the name of Allah, The Merciful, The Misericord ,”. It is not ,in Syria led by the Baath.

The alliance with Iran , relating to Syria, is more serious in the Opposition. Nobody knows, but an “Iranian Spring” exists, with the same claims than Syrian Revolutionaries; but if Iranians, too, want to topple the regime, it is because of what committed the Mullahs in the past, exactly in 1988, and they continue: Iran hang all opponents whatever the age. It is the first country in the world about death penalty. The Iranian Opposition wants a democracy for all religions and all citizens.

The alliance with Russia and Iran provoked demonstrations facing the embassies of the two countries.

The Russian veto to all UN Resolutions makes Putin responsible for the crimes committed in Syria, just the same as Assad.

With Aleppo, with the events in this town, we discovered another dimension of what we called a “War”. The town and its inhabitants were exterminated: in hunger and in bombings , only the White Helmets , the Syrian Civil Defense, provided rescue.On Twitter today, the hashtag #Aleppoisinmyheart went viral.

It is not a “Civil War”; it is a genocide, the deliberate extermination of a whole people.

Words matter: war crimes are the fact to kill civilians; genocide, to kill a people.